There has been a strong interest on the part of utility companies, and similar entities, to take advantage of modern technology to reduce costs and increase efficiency in meter reading applications. Traditionally, meters, such as electric, water, and gas meters, have been manually read by a person physically reading each meter. However, recent developments have provided for meters which can be remotely accessed from a central location through wire or wireless (e.g., radio frequency, etc.) communication links. Oftentimes, these remotely accessible meters have battery powered meter interface devices which can access the meter status information, and which can communicate via radio frequency signals the meter status information to a remotely situated meter reading device. In such cases, issues associated with power consumption management are an important concern in a remote meter reading system since the meter interface devices in the system are typically battery operated.
In a typical operational environment, a meter reading system includes a large number of meter installations. Low maintenance battery-operated meters are desirable to facilitate operating efficiency and to reduce maintenance costs. Therefore, it is desirable to have a meter interface device which can operate for an extended period of time without requiring frequent maintenance for battery replacement and the like. Such maintenance requirements may be reduced by increasing battery capacity or by reducing power consumption. The more viable option of reducing power consumption at the battery powered meter interface unit is usually pursued. For example, the meter interface device may be placed in a sleep or low power operating mode when there is no ongoing communication with a meter reading device. A trade off is usually made between the availability of the meter interface device for communications with the meter reading device and the amount of power consumption savings which can be achieved. A meter interface device employing a power consumption saving technique may not be able to communicate with the remote meter reading device given that the radio circuitry or sections of circuitry in the meter interface unit may be shut-off when the unit is in the sleep mode in order to conserve the unit's battery energy.
There exists a need for a meter reading system and method in which meters can be read without worrying whether the unit is in a non-communication state (i.e., sleep mode) but yet can provide the remote meters with improved battery savings.